New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics

by Diana Coole (editor), Jane Bennett (Contributor), Pheng Cheah (Contributor)

New Materialisms brings into focus and explains the significance of the innovative materialist critiques that are emerging across the social sciences and humanities. By gathering essays that exemplify the new thinking about matter and processes of materialization, this important collection shows how scholars are reworking older materialist traditions, contemporary theoretical debates, and advances in scientific knowledge to address pressing ethical and political challenges. In the introduction, Diana Coole and Samantha Frost highlight common themes among the distinctive critical projects that comprise the new materialisms. The continuities they discern include a posthumanist conception of matter as lively or exhibiting agency, and a reengagement with both the material realities of everyday life and broader geopolitical and socioeconomic structures.Coole and Frost argue that contemporary economic, environmental, geopolitical, and technological developments demand new accounts of nature, agency, and social and political relationships; modes of inquiry that privilege consciousness and subjectivity are not adequate to the task. New materialist philosophies are needed to do justice to the complexities of twenty-first-century biopolitics and political economy, because they raise fundamental questions about the place of embodied humans in a material world and the ways that we produce, reproduce, and consume our material environment.

ContributorsSara AhmedJane BennettRosi BraidottiPheng CheahRey ChowWilliam E. ConnollyDiana CooleJason EdwardsSamantha FrostElizabeth GroszSonia KruksMelissa A. Orlie

Genres: Philosophy, Theory, Nonfiction, Politics, Academic, Research, Sociology

348 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2009

Reviews

[Rhys · Rating 4 out of 5]

New Materialisms is a group of essays with a range of perspectives on critical materialism. I found each of the essays interesting (which is rare from an edited collection).

[sophie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am extremely new to the world of Ontology, the Philosophies of Materialism and the ways in which we think about how we operate as humans, especially in regards to Nature (the move away from anthropocentrism) and the ideas of what we are “made of”: impersonal matter? Matter we can control?

I did not read everything. Hopefully I will get to some more, but the ones I did engage with are:

- Introducing the new materialisms
- The Inertia of Matter and the Generativity of Flesh
- Impersonal Matter (#3)
- Feminism, Materialism, and Freedom (#1 fav)
- Fear and the Illusion of Autonomy (#2)

It was a hard, lengthy read for most of these and it took a lot of google searches, time, re readings and highlighting to begin to understand the concepts that these theorists and philosophers are presenting (although, easier than some philosophy and theory-based texts I’ve (attempted) to read!). These essays changed the way I think about how humans operate and the illusion of control and freedom in our lives. Above all, it got me thinking about Matter and how we as humans engage with it, how/if we are made of it, how we treat this knowledge, and how it affects our lives in a world we are so familiar with- a world that really inhibits any new ways of thinking, and one that makes our human-centered world (and our innate tendency to crave control as humans) angry or hostile towards these new ideas about life as we know it.

“we are helpless and sometimes consciously humbled whenever we catch a glimpse of the impersonal energies that we ordinarily reify into definitive ideas of selves and world. Such disruptive, impersonal energies are at once intimately present but neither identifiable as completely our own nor controlled by us. In response we make every effort to personalize the impersonal, to make it our own by projecting meaning upon it” (Impersonal Matter).

[Jonna Higgins-Freese · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just couldn't get into it. I found Archaeological Theory in the New Millennium a much more compelling treatment of the new materialisms, along with Karen Barad's Meeting the Universe Halfway.

One compelling quote:

"As human beings we inhabit an ineluctably material world. We live our everyday lives surrounded by, immersed in, matter. We are ourselves composed of matter. We experience its restlessness and intransigence even as we reconfigure and consume it. At every turn we encounter physical objects fashioned by human design and endure natural forces whose imperatives structure our daily routines for survival. Our existence depends from one moment to the next on myriad micro-organisms and diverse higher species, on our own hazily understood bodily and cellular reactions and on pitiless cosmic motions, on the material artifacts and natural stuff that populate our environment, as well as on socioeconomic structures that prodeuce and reproduce the conditions of our everyday lives. In light of this massive materiality, how could we be anything other than materialist? How could we ignore the power of matter and thew ays it materializes in our ordinary experiences or fail to acknowledge the primacy of matter in our theories?

"Yes for the most part we take such materiality for granted, or we assume that there is little of interest to say about it . . . . for there is an apparent paradox in thinking about matter: as soon as we do so, we seem to distance ourselves from it, and within the space that opens up, a host of immaterial things seems to emerge: language, consciousness, subjectivity, agency, mind, soul; also imagination, emotions, values, meaning, and so on" (2).

[Vanessa Lehan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm giving this three stars because, while some of these essays are really great, some of them had theses that were either unoriginal or not well supported. Overall I found the essay choices a bit strange, i.e., many of these essays don't seem to belong together in a collection (perhaps the interpretation of "materialism" is too broad?).

[Carisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Intro & Bennett chapters were excellent. Cheah and Coole chapters also quite good. Got a bit repetitive, and some of the chapters retread quite closely work the authors have published elsewhere. Still, the good stuff was really meaty.

[Alexander Jolley · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reframing and updating the philosophical framework for materialism, the authors intend, through short essays on various subjects, to redefine materialism for a new age by rejecting metaphysical accounts, while still maintaining the interconnectivity of all matter in a connected system.

The authors argue that the world is an interconnected system. The human body is made up of many small processes that we have no perception of; the interconnectivity of all objects is present, and thus being a materialist is simply a logical conclusion given these sets of facts. The authors further argue that increases in technology have presented the need for updating, as old materialist models had limited science at their disposal. Significant advances like dark matter have spurred us to reconsider what matter is and the relationship between matter and human consciousness. The increase in digital connectivity has already challenged our assumptions of what it means to be human; thus, we are invited to consider all life and matter on a similar playing field.

In a case study on the materialist philosopher Merleau-Ponty, the author describes the history of materialism and its reliance on metaphysical and teleological assumptions. The author aims to reconsider materialism without animism, religion, or romanticism, and uses Merleau-Ponty as the catalyst for such. Merleau-Ponty seeks to establish that there are no substantial differences between the physical, life, and the mind. These old categories (space, time, matter, agency, etc.) are old categories that rely on theological assumptions. However, meaning, as Merleau-Ponty puts it, relies on corporality, which living creatures give to objects. Consciousness is assumed to be a byproduct of matter being arranged in a particular way, although this is still an avenue that is not understood. Merleau-Ponty also fashions the _fold_ understanding of matter to explain how matter can complicate itself and leave no room for holes.

The authors quote often from past philosophers ranging from Aristotle to Descartes, as well as current scientists and their recent hypotheses. The authors also use a lot of past materialist authors to demonstrate the historiographical trends leading to their new assertions. The primary conclusion is one of recontextualization, that in the wake of the current environmental movement, to achieve a greater understanding and purpose in people that reframing matter and the environment as one is necessary.

A weakness of the arguments rests on the foundational assumption that there is no higher power. The authors make this assumption and run with it. They never attempt to discredit or disprove, or even redefine, such a higher power. Many philosophers and scientists have tried to do such a thing, but without any such evidence or proof of the matter, this entire subject is, in essence, a baseless theory that requires proofless assumptions. The authors gave us no reason to take it than more than face value.

[Mariam Rawwas · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection frames new materialism as a philosophical response to advents in scientific theorizing, namely in the field of quantum mechanics, which throw into question our intuitive understandings of "matter," especially since they are simply posited as such in order to account for phenomena taken to be their effects (such as gravity), and that the properties of subatomic particles likewise seem to be assigned on an ad-hoc basis. It is therefore not substantiality that distinguishes matter as such, and philosophy must therefore cull its historical resources in order to develop a materialism worthy of our contemporary scientific climate. We turn, therefore, to the "usual suspects": Marx, Nietzsche, Freud; Hobbes, Spinoza, Bergson; Deleuze, Derrida, Foucault; Althusser, Sohn-Rethel, Žižek; Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, de Beauvoir; but also Hans Driesch. Obviously, I find some of these lines much more productive to follow than others. One question, then, becomes the relation between the eponymous "new materialisms" and aleatory materialism in specific: Althusser has already attempted to "ontologize" Epicurus, Hobbes, Spinoza, Marx, et al., just as Deleuze has already attempted to "ontologize" Spinoza, Bergson, etc. Another, perhaps much less addressed in this volume, connection is to Haraway (only briefly mentioned) and from there to cybernetics and dynamic systems theory more generally. While serving well as an introduction, then, there is much left to clarify as to how this crop of "new materialisms" differentiates itself from the rest of the philosophical field: is Grosz simply a Deleuzian now, or is there more to it?

[Gee · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked this out while writing my dissertation and I didn't expect to fall in love with a book like I did this one. It's a collection of essays by different academics and could therefore be regarded as "dense" and not really pleasure reading for most, but I found every single essay mesmerising. This book as a collection actually changed my life in a similar way that a self help book might do.

[amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyed Sara Ahmed's chapter on tables 💯

[T · Rating 2 out of 5]

sorry to say but this crap aged very badly.

[Alejandro · Rating 2 out of 5]

mucho ruido y pocas nueces

[Billy Dean · Rating 2 out of 5]

I knew trouble was coming with the introduction: unsubstantiated claims about the entire history of philosophy, positions attributed to figures like Descartes and Deleuze without evidence, the obligatory vague and almost spooky invocations of quantum physics and dark matter, and a paper-thin justification for why this brand of materialism is "new."

This collection has a few good moments, but I'm still waiting to see what the fuss is all about.

[Nana · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great collection of essays questioning wide ranging issues relating to Materialism and pertaining to various disciplines. Material confronted as vital matter, as a non-human agent in assemblages and as a catalyst in material politics. Some of the chapters were a bit overlapping, but in no way repetitive.

[Jo · Rating 5 out of 5]

So far, this books operates more like a manual to disassemble our facile notions of matter and how we 'arrived' at this point. Extremely good.

[Scott Neigh]

Reviewed here.

[Mills College Library]

146.3 N53254 2010